The Stillhouse Trestle curved across a ravine on a steep downgrade approaching Danville. Eyewitnesses watched the Fast Mail barrel toward the bridge at a speed far beyond what the curve could handle. The locomotive, Engine 1102, careened off the side of the trestle, dragging two postal cars, one express car, and one baggage car into the ravine below. Eleven crew members died, including engineer Broady, conductor Blair, and flagman Moody. Both firemen were recovered, but their bodies were so badly mangled they could not be identified. Seven others were injured. Several survivors believed they lived only because they jumped from the train just before the fatal plunge. Express messenger Pinckney survived, went home to Charlotte, North Carolina, and immediately resigned. A large case filled with canaries also survived the crash, the birds escaping and flying to safety as the wreckage smoldered in the ravine below.

The Southern Railway moved quickly to blame Broady, insisting the engineer had not been ordered to run at dangerous speeds. Railroad officials claimed he descended the grade toward the trestle at excessive velocity of his own volition. But eyewitnesses told a different story, estimating the train's speed was high but likely driven by institutional pressure. The railroad held a lucrative contract with the U.S. Post Office to haul mail, and the contract included a penalty clause for every minute of delay into Atlanta. Engineers piloting the Fast Mail ran under constant pressure to keep schedule, knowing that late delivery meant financial penalties for the company. The Fast Mail had already been in another fatal accident earlier that same year: on April 13, 1903, the train struck a boulder near Lexington, North Carolina, killing the engineer and fireman. Engine 1102, remarkably, was pulled from the ravine at Stillhouse Trestle, repaired, and returned to service, running until it was finally dismantled in July 1935.

The disaster inspired songwriting almost immediately. Fred Jackson Lewey claimed to have written lyrics the day after the wreck. His cousin Albion Clapp was one of the two firemen killed, and Lewey worked at a cotton mill at the base of the trestle. He said he helped pull victims from the wreckage and put his grief into verse. Musician Henry Whitter later polished and altered Lewey's lyrics. Virginia musicians G. B. Grayson and Whitter made the first commercial recording. Then Vernon Dalhart recorded his version in 1924 for the Victor Talking Machine Company, with Carson Robison on guitar and Dalhart on harmonica. The record is sometimes cited as the first million-selling country music release in America. The song rivaled "Casey Jones" as the most famous railroading ballad of all time, and went on to be recorded by Johnny Cash, Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Hank Snow, Roy Acuff, Flatt and Scruggs, and dozens more.

The ballad's success sparked a legal fight that reached the highest court in the land. In 1927, local resident David Graves George claimed authorship. George was a brakeman and telegraph operator who was among the first on the scene after the wreck. A singer himself, he said the tragedy inspired him to compose the ballad. After Dalhart's recording sold millions, George filed a claim for ownership. In 1933, Judge John Boyd ruled in George's favor and ordered the Victor Talking Machine Company to pay $65,000 from profits on roughly five million records sold. Victor appealed three times. The first two appeals upheld George's claim. The third reversed it, ruling in Victor's favor. George then appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, but the Court dismissed his case, ruling he had filed too late. Victor retained ownership of the ballad, and the question of who truly wrote "Wreck of the Old 97" was never definitively settled.

The site of the wreck near Danville, Virginia, is marked by a Virginia historical marker, and the Stillhouse Trestle area remains a point of pilgrimage for railroad history enthusiasts and folk music devotees alike. The ballad's opening lines still place listeners on that train: Steve Broady receiving his orders in Monroe, the clock running against him, the curve at Danville approaching too fast. More than a century later, the song endures as a monument to the eleven men who died, to the corporate pressure that put speed above safety, and to the strange alchemy by which disaster becomes art. The Roanoke Public Libraries hold photographs of the original accident scene, and the ballad holds entry number 777 in the Roud Folk Song Index, a fitting catalog of its place in the American songbook.